Spain calculates sex trade worth €60 Mln per day

Source: International Business Times - Tue 10th Jun 2014

Spain is cutting its public deficit by massaging numbers. The manipulation comes in the form of including the value of the work of prostitutes as well as those in other illegal activities such as drugs, people trafficking and contraband.

In an effort to clean up the streets and protect both sex workers and customers, the city of Zurich in Switzerland has officially opened its first sex drive-in. Since the legalization of prostitution in the country, the government has set aside a million Euros to build "sex boxes" and drive-ins to accommodate sex trade.

The country's National Statistics Institute (INE) called the organisation of national brothel keepers to get the correct numbers. It is actually part of an order from the European Union, which gave members until 2016 to follow, reports The Guardian.

The aim is to help members of EU drop below the bloc's debt ceiling of 3% of GDP.

A spokesman for ANELA, the organisation of alternate clubs - as brothel houses are also called in Spain - thought the call from INE asking for financial data was initially a prank. INE needed information such as the number of sex workers needed for a club to be financially viable.

Roca disclosed that 50 prostitutes are needed. Each sex trade worker charges an average of €40-€70 and they have an average of 4 to 8 clients a day.

Ahead of the 2016 deadline, UK's Office for National Statistics already had estimates in May, but the data were based on 2009 figures. The agency found that the sex trade and illegal drug trade in the country contributed £9.7 billion or 0.7% of Britain's GDP. The figure was broken down into £5.3 billion from brothels and £4.4 billion from drug trade.

According to Eurostat, in Poland and Romania, these two trades contribute to 1% of the GDP, in Spain and Italy 1 to 2%, in the UK 3 to 4% and in Finland and Sweden up to 5%.

Previous statistics in Spain place the number of prostitutes at 300,000, five times bigger than the number of sex trade workers in the UK.

Rough estimates of a prostitute having 5 clients a day and receiving €40 for each service would translate into a total industry earnings of €60 million per day. On further assumptions that the prostitutes don't work everyday and only about 50% work at any given time, the estimate would place the numbers at €10 billion yearly.

As for drugs, Spain's interior ministry said the drug trades earn about €16 million daily or €7.5 billion yearly. With an estimated Q1 2014 GDP of €256 billion, it would appear the drug trade contributes 0.5%, while the sex trade 1%.